Does Coaching deliver all the impressive results that it promises?

It may seem that I doubt Coaching and its results. In fact I do.

I am a Coach and a thinker and the best thing I can do is to question everything. It is probably the only way to maintain a clear view on the events and understand them as facts before we classify them in our thinking as patterns or phenomena. 

In the last 10 years that I have been involved in Coaching I have met numerous coaches, searched the profiles and internet sites of hundreds, and read the ads and the articles of a lot of them. At the same time, I have the experience of coaching people and following up with them long after the end of a coaching programme.

In most articles and advertisements, coaches promise that they can “change your life, “make your dreams come true”, “reach your peak potential” and various other impressive achievements. It is like all those slimming products that promise you that you will look like a model after you use them for three months and then you realize that you may slightly improve your looks but will not look like a model unless you get on a diet for years, train for three hours a day for the next 3 years and have cosmetic surgery.

This is why it’s important to ask questions like how many of those attending such programmes end up in completely changing a person’s life and in transforming it?

• There may be some cases of thorough transformation; but I will come back to that.

• There are also cases where there is some sort of change that lasts for a few months and some months after the programme ends gradually the Coachee goes back to their previous behavior and habits or to a behaviour that is closer to the old than to the new.

• There are also cases where nothing happens.

• There are also cases where transformation is latent and not a direct consequence of coaching.

Usually for some people who start a coaching programme and get enthusiastic about it; they think that coaching can do magic and fix all their weaknesses and deficiencies. They seemingly think that the coach can change their mindset, their attitude and their behavior and automatically their life will become their ideal situation. On the other hand, many coaches advertise that they can change a person’s life and inadvertently misrepresents all coaches. In the end, the result is not as big as “a life change” but something more modest and much more specific like a behavioural change that may or may not be sustainable in the long run.

I think it is true to say that all Coaches want to promote their valuable work and promise that they can change somebody’s life. To verify that this happens, we need to listen to the feedback we receive from the client and/or sponsors, overall they are happy with the coaching programme because they not only dedicated time to themselves and had the full attention of a specialized professional, however, the end result may not be as ‘impressive’ as advertised. This suggests that coaching may help with laying the groundworks, nevertheless for a big achievement to potentially happen it seems that the following two criteria are necessary otherwise nothing will happen:

a/ the client is fully dedicated

and at the same time

b/ the external circumstances are favourable towards the goal.

 As ethical coaches – staying true to ourselves - we can see that coaching (in its current form) cannot ‘change’ a person’s life. A coach can however ‘support’ a client discover what they want, find out their abilities and some hidden beliefs that obstruct their progress and maybe shape a new dream or a new goal in life. And thus, by extension a coaching programme might change a person’s life.

What is the real change that Coaching can bring to a client’s life?

A person’s life will change if they start acting differently and at the same time their circumstances change to their benefit.

Do we have any control over any of those two? Definitely no.

As a Coach I always ask myself about my contribution to a person’s life. I always try to maintain a very clear view of my contribution and I always put that into a context. Whatever we do does not exist in vacuum; it is a component of the context. For example, we may support the client in finding a new goal but at the same time, they may win a lottery that will completely change their life and open a whole new world in front of them! Or their company may open a new position in another country where they are the only candidate. They take the position and that will change their life completely by giving them a unique opportunity to relocate and work in another country. Or they may have a terrible accident that will obstruct them from any movement and potentially lose their role.

Recently I had a case where the Coachee’s goal was to improve their leadership abilities with their team. We had worked together for about 4 months and the team’s performance really improved impressively; in the fourth month the company decided to apply their rotation policy in all European countries and as a result she will change position. What will happen to her “leadership skills improvement” result with the team? Nobody knows. On the other hand a new position at the headquarters is offered to her and that will open a whole new world of opportunity for her. And let’s be real. That was just a coincidence, a matter of luck that happened at this specific point in life. It is not coaching that brought that big change!

If the context offers opportunity and luck then the result will be excellent; if the context is against progress and obstacles appear every day, the Coachee may never get the result because all of their potential and energy is invested in survival; it is as simple as that.

The result that the coachee achieves in the end is a combination of our work, their actions and the external circumstances that may favor or doom the whole effort.

The most important element of the equation is out of our control: external circumstances. Therefore, we cannot promise that “we change lives” and, in my opinion, we shouldn’t do so.

The one and only lasting contribution of Coaching to a client’s life

What do we control in that equation? We control our work with the client. We can apply our methodology and our tools to support a client and, most importantly, dig into our knowledge about any science or any field of expertise to discover useful ideas, scientific principles, historic examples that will open our mind and enrich our approach and understanding. History, Anthropology, Physics, Philosophy, Literature, Art, Mathematics, our life experience, habits from other cultures, movies, the wisdom of old proverbs are the golden treasure of a mature coach who can use them to expand their own thinking to enrich their knowledge with Science and Arts and then help their client to discover new aspects in their context, relationships and life.

Expanding the thinking by opening a new world of ideas, approaches and views is a precious gift to the person who is looking for development – self, personally and professionally. Being able to consider and see other sides of an issue gives that advantage and edge of a more thorough understanding of the challenge, that can then lead to a higher ability for better decisions.

If there is one sustainable result of coaching and the most precious one, I believe is most important, is the widening of the horizon, the expansion of the thinking. If a client achieves to expand their thinking and their brain reaches a higher level of functioning it will not go back to a limited thinking and the result will remain.

I believe that it is our responsibility as coaches to develop ourselves at the level that we will have the highly evolved ability to give this precious gift to our clients. It depends on our own ability to expand and enhance our thinking, to increase our knowledge with Science, cultivate our mind with Philosophy and refine our emotions with Art. It takes time, effort and a continuously progressing brain to expand your own thinking before we are able to support others to do it.  But, if Coaching can become an important Art, it will be because it expands the thinking and opens a new way of understanding life and its mysteries.

Maria Biquet is an experienced multilingual Business Consultant and Executive Coach with vast experience from diverse business fields, such as Banking & Financing, Automotive, Telecommunications and Education. Maria has long experience in Strategic Marketing and in establishing companies in new markets.

She holds a University degree in Language & Linguistics, an MBA-International Marketing and is a Neurocoach certified by the NBG – Harvard School and a Master Coach certified by the CAC. Works in Greek, English and French.

Connect with Maria Biquet and read her other posts published on the good coach.